A strategy for fighting the “FAANG” tech giants
Even while it turbocharges movements to fight unaccountable power, the Internet itself is becoming one. The tech press has a fun name for the companies driving this trend: FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.)
To accompany the HOPE talk Zbay, Fighting FAANG, and the Quest for a Peer-To-Peer Messaging App That “Just Works”, this page proposes a strategy for fighting FAANG: building free software, peer-to-peer apps that, like predecessors Limewire and Bitcoin, are fully forkable, that is, forkable in ways that preserve the full content and user experience of the original.
The talk
Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/444081020
Sources:
- Bitcoin over Tor isn’t a good idea
- Reddit’s main code is no longer open-source.
- Sorry Facebook, Reddit Is Now The Third Most Popular Site In The US
- Coinye
- Hong Kong Unrest Drives 4x Surge in Telegram Downloads, Boosts Other Apps Used by Protesters
- Signal Downloads Are Way Up Since the Protests Began
- Scalable Privacy - Daira Hopwood at Zcon1
- Loki Service Node Financials (reddit thread)
Peer-to-peer messaging apps
Messaging seems like a uniquely promising place where peer-to-peer apps can fight FAANG, so the talk (and this page) focus on messaging apps. This list is not comprehensive, and if there is an approach to peer-to-peer messaging you’d like to see listed here, submit a pull request or contact us.
Relevant projects
- Aether
- 3box
- Blockstack
- IPFS
- Filecoin
- Textile
- GUN
- Scuttlebutt
- Patchwork
- Planetary
- Radicle
- Webtorrent
- Webtorrent Workshop
- Particl
- OpenBazaar
- Tor
- Nym
- Loopix
- Orchid
About
FightFAANG is a project of Zbay founder Holmes Wilson, who previously co-founded the U.S.-based tech activism nonprofit Fight for the Future.
Acknowledgments
A hearty thanks to Guillaume Marceau and Lisa LaRochelle for their feedback on Zbay, this talk, and the ideas underlying both.